Teachers' Views on Student Books Prepared for 1st Graders' Adaptation And Preparation Practices (Denizli Sample)

Abstract

The rapid changes in the information era have affected education systems. Within this context, new regulations and alterations are often introduced in Turkey as well as in all over the world. Recently, the Ministry of National Education has adopted the new 4+4+4 model which started to be implemented as of 2012-2013 school year. With this change, the structure of the schools and lowering the school starting age have often been discussed in public. The school starting age was lowered to 60 to 66 months old, and primary school was divided into two levels as elementary school and middle school. These regulations mostly affected the 1st graders and their teachers. The age for starting 1st grade was lowered to 60 to 66 months old, and a 12-week adaptation and preparation process was added to the program for the students' adaptation to school. Moreover, there were also guide books prepared for use by students and teachers in this process. The aim of this study was to identify teachers' views on coursebooks prepared for 1st graders' adaptation and preparation practices, and to form a basis for the future regulations by revealing the deficiencies of the current model. In this study, qualitative research method was employed to collect detailed and in-depth data, learn participants' individual perceptions, experiences and point of views, and to understand and explain the current situations. For this study, case study design within the qualitative method was used to identify elementary teachers' views on the books prepared for the 1st graders' adaptation and preparation. Within case study models, Holistic Single Case model was used. The population for the study is 1st grade teachers teaching at state schools in the central district of Denizli. A total of 75 elementary school teachers of 1st graders were reached and given the question forms. The question form included open-ended questions developed by the researchers. The results revealed that according to the teachers' views, the adaptation and preparation books were able to develop students' problem solving skills, the activities in the books caused problems due to not being suitable for the level, and the instructions in the books were not sufficient. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.